Bonaventura On Transformers, GI Joe & More

Latino Review sat down with “Shooter” producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura recently who spilled a lot on his upcoming schedule.

First up he confirms that the only person they’ve hired from the original “Transformers” cartoon is Peter Cullen to play Optimus Prime in the upcoming Michael Bay live-action film. Megatron they haven’t hired anyone yet and are still making a decision. An official final trailer will be coming in mid-April to early May.

In terms of “G.I. Joe” don’t expect that title to stay, but do expect one new character – “Action Man is the equivalent of G.I. Joe internationally pretty much. It’s a different character, but pretty much the same idea and his name is Alex Mann. So we’re creating a buddy movie between Duke and Alex. That’s what we’re doing. All the characters will be there and it’ll be really fun, but unfortunately our president has put us in a position internationally where it would be very difficult to release a movie called ‘G.I. Joe’ internationally in a lot of places”.

Finally will “Beverly Hills Cop 4” ever happen? “We’re developing a couple of takes right now. We’re hoping to make that thing pretty quickly. Eddie [Murphy] would like to make it his third movie from now. He’s already lined up two and so the one after that… He’s always been interested in doing it again” he says. Tone wise it’ll be different too – “A guy who is really cocky at age twenty five or whatever, I can’t remember, but it’s different playing that when you’re forty something and try to play cocky. You have to figure out how Axle[Foley, Murphy’s character] would evolve over twenty years. So it’s an interesting challenge.